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| How do you like our $29 clearance sheet? |
With my heavy travel schedule and Thanksgiving the last two weeks, Connor has gotten some time off, with just a bareback ride a week ago, and a real ride today, and no lessons. I wasn't sure if we were at a place where a vacation would help, hurt, or be neutral after our muscle building late last summer and then our big breakthrough and subsequent good rides over the past month.
About the time I finished with stalls today and went to pull Connor out of his field, the redneck neighbors that live immediately behind the facility (This is the Midwestern US, after all, we ALL have redneck neighbors.) were having target practice with their rifles and shotguns, and the horses were terrified. As someone married to a weekly league target competition shooter at the local gun club, I would describe it as irresponsibly loud and constant target practice given how hard the horses were panicking (the shooting was taking place 20 feet beyond our fence line). It continued even after I grabbed Connor and started riding in the indoor, and he was tense, up, and spooking at things he doesn't normally spook at, trying to decide whether the noise could be coming from the pile of jump standards in the middle of the ring:
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| He gave these the evil eye the entire lesson, every time there was a shot. |
Or the poles and flowers in the corner:
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| Terrifying, I know. |
Since we most often show at the Hoosier Horse Park, which is next door to Camp Atterbury, this does also fall under the "I wouldn't scratch for this at a show, therefore I will train in it" rule. Try riding your Dressage test when they're practicing with the heavy artillery and Blackhawk helicopters are flying low enough for you to wave at the army guys hanging out of it! I decided to work him at the walk only to allow his brain to process everything until I got him soft, round and listening at the walk, and that my litmus test for his submission would be a quiet halt off of my seat, like we normally get.
It took quite a while, but I got it, and only after I got it did I ask for the trot. To my amazement, he never missed a beat from where we were before the break, and may have been even better, though he's always better when he's nervous. Does the lovely, forward 'suspension bridge' hind-end drive trot ever get old? People with mature/"finished" horses, does their ability to not only retain what you've taught them but also learn new things ever get old? Connor's green enough that consistency and retention from week to week is still amazing to me, especially so after a break.
Once I had him soft, supple and listening, I trotted him through this exercise someone had left out in the indoor:
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| All photos taken while on horseback, I apologize for the blur. Standing is not one of Connor's strong qualities. |
And after he went through it several times without hitting it (didn't hit it once, actually!) and with the same long but connected trot my trainer asked us for in our last lesson, I cooled him out and called it a day. At 63 degrees on the second day of December, it was way too hot to ask anyone that isn't sporting a full clip to go too hard. Just the walking and trotting that we did left Connor sweatier than he's been all winter. How ARE you supposed to manage clipped horses when the weather has 40 degree temperature swings for two straight weeks?
It's good to be back!
